This Rough Magic

Chapter 36

Benito was nearly thrown overboard when they struck the rock. He knew straight away they were in trouble. The galley had a draft of one and a half fathoms, when she was this heavily laden. They were relying on hitting the shore at speed to beach the vessel so that the men could emerge without swimming. Now they'd lost their momentum and she was holed. The ship would ride deeper than her one and a half fathoms. The sailors could easily manage the twenty yards to shore . . . if they could swim. The knights in heavy armor had not a chance.

'Get them to strip their armor!' yelled Benito.

'Takes too long!' bellowed Manfred, above the bedlam of screaming horses and shouting men.

'Get a rope to the shore!' commanded the captain.

Benito took the end of a light line. 'Get the anchor rope on the other end!' he shouted, and dived overboard.

On the beach, he saw he'd arrived in the shallows just ahead of the Corfiote steersman who also had a rope.

'Hands to these ropes all of you. Move!' he commanded.

* * *

Maria saw how the port gate had opened farther up the shore toward the Hungarian trenches. Great balks of timber were being thrust out and now, in the shelter of these, hundreds of men and women from the Citadel were streaming to help.

Maria ran to join them. It was only when she was out on the shingle that it occurred to her that a woman with a baby on her back shouldn't do this. It was too late by then, though, so she ran on. By the time she got there, the men were hauling at the anchor ropes—twisted hempen lines as thick as her arm—of the galley still wallowing and sinking further out. They were using the second galley as a bulwark. And by the looks of it, the Arsenalotti who had pushed out the timber barrier were extending and raising it. Still, shots whistled overhead as, handspan by handspan, they hauled the other galley closer. Someone had unlimbered a small boat from the first galley and it was hastily paddled out the fifteen remaining yards or so, to begin bringing people in.

'Get men with shovels and start digging a trench, we need to unload!' shouted a voice Maria recognized. Erik Hakkonsen!

What a bitter irony. Svanhild was not in the Citadel but out there somewhere. Hopefully safe . . .

'What the hell are you doing out here, Maria?' Benito looked anything but pleased to see her. 'And—Jesus wept!—with your baby! Get back! No, stay here! It's safer here.'

'I've come to help you out of your mess!' she snapped back. 'And my child goes with me. At her age she has to.'

'Merde! Well, just stay behind the Dolphin. At this range they're not going to get a bullet right through her.' He ran out, regardless of his own safety, getting into deeper water. 'Come on! She's only neck deep on a short knight. Let's have what people we can off and then we'll haul her a bit further in. Another five yards and we'll get the horses out.'

Maria saw Francesca and Eneko Lopez and some other clerics coming ashore in the small boat. She waved, but they didn't notice her. Well, there'd be time for greetings if they survived all this.

A group of very brave Magyar cavalrymen, or perhaps just very stupid ones, had swum their horses across the channel between the Citadel and Corfu Island. The cannon and gunfire from above had had a devastating effect on what had been perhaps four hundred men who had set out to cross the gap. Now the remainder had won the sand strip and were charging down it.

A handful of arquebusiers had taken up position behind the balks of timber. The gate swung hastily shut behind them . . . but there was timber in the way. It could not be closed. What had started out as a glorious rescue mission was fast turning into a fiasco.

And then Maria realized that Knights of the Holy Trinity were already swinging themselves into the saddle. Perhaps only thirty of them were ready to mount, but they were up and riding, broadswords out, hurtling toward the oncoming Hungarians. When the Hungarians had begun their charge they'd outnumbered the Knights by five to one. By the time they clashed, however, those odds had been viciously reduced. The wall on their right was lined with people—some soldiers, firing, but the rest just men and women throwing whatever they had in their hands. Even cobblestones.

The Knights were still outnumbered three to one. But these were the Knights of the Holy Trinity, perhaps Europe's finest. They hit the Hungarians on a narrow strip of beach, too narrow for either side to ride more than eight abreast. For the swim across, the Magyar knights had reduced the weight of their armor to breastplates. They were very much at a disadvantage compared to the Knights in full armor.

Even as the first handful of Knights charged, more Knights were mounting, yelling and swearing at the Venetian sailors in their way. The sailors, too, were running to the timber-balk barrier with arquebuses, pistols and cutlasses.

If the Magyars could have carried their charge to the open gate, it would have been a different story. Speed had lent them some protection from those on the wall. But now, stopped and completely defenseless against the attack from above, they were being annihilated. And the second galley was now discharging more wet, angry Knights.

'Let them handle that!' roared a bull-like voice. Manfred strode through the small waves, and grabbed the anchor rope. 'Haul! On the count of three!'

Manfred had both the voice and the presence for command, so more men rushed to seize the ropes. The ship however was filling up, settling, heavier. Much heavier. Maria, who was now hauling the water for their little house daily, knew just how much water weighed.

'One, two, three! Heave.'

The vessel moved sluggishly. It wallowed like a drunken cow.

'And again! One, two, three.'

Out beyond the ships, the Magyars were being reduced to bloody fragments. Maria promptly dismissed them from her mind, and went back to something she could do something about.